


the space between

by Naolin



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 13:23:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11760795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naolin/pseuds/Naolin
Summary: Ezreal meets Lux. (But, the wrong Lux.)





	the space between

Something happens during an arcane shift.  
  
It's a drain on his magic to go so far, but he wants to cross a river on the way back to Piltover without walking all the way to wherever that damn bridge was. And sure, some people might say he could just use his map instead of relying only on memory and rumors from the travelers that flit in and out of town, but Ezreal doesn't really like that level of certainty.  
  
Granted, sometimes blindly following rumors leads to month long expeditions to fucking nowhere for fucking nothing, but oh well.  
  
At least this time he isn't coming back empty handed.  
  
The ruins had been old, and their architecture unfamiliar. Almost as if it was not from anywhere at all. Ezreal is no expert in architecture, at least, not anymore than he is an expert at everything. But he recognizes patterns. He knows that Demacia is full of wide windows and tall spires, all white and light and marble. He knows that Ionia is, at its core, about beauty. Designed to complement nature, to inspire wonder and creativity. He knows that Noxus is just as orderly with their layouts, but substitutes flourish for imposition. Freljord is all about survival, naturally leaning towards stability over appearance.  
  
Then there is Piltover and Zaun, of course, all high-concept and bizarre. Even the remnants of old society built with an emphasis on showing off the latest technology. Showcasing tools and concepts, often at the expense of functionality.  
  
Ezreal isn't particularly surprised by the reliability of trends. It's natural that society builds up out of the shadow of the past. He's sure the history of nearly anywhere is nothing but an extension of what things used to be like in the same area. The world doesn't change. Not really. People do, and cultures shift. Priorities may focus and refocus, and technology and understanding may grow and swell and billow out the norms.  
  
But the world doesn't change. He wishes it would.  
  
He never really knows what he is looking for on these expeditions, but he thinks he would like to find something truly new someday. Something that calls to the magic in his blood and brings him home.  
  
It was in shambles, everything but the stone foundation gone. What must have been a long breezeway had lead down to dozens of smaller, identical rooms. Any furniture in them had long-since deteriorated. The roofing had collapsed, though some of it was replaced by fallen tree branches and convenient gatherings of autumn leaves over the old framework. If he is honest, Ezreal likes this the most. Half-destroyed things with only what was strongest left of them. Sunlight coming down in thick streaks, like gold is being painted out in front of him. Dust in the air is as good as precious gems for the way it imprints in his mind.  
  
It was, he had thought, maybe some kind of ancient hotel. It is a mistake to assume that lost civilizations did not need the same things that books call modern and recent. People of the past were not any less intelligent and capable than the people of today. Maybe they did not understand as much about the world around, them, but “give money, receive bed” is not such a high concept.  
  
Knowing that each of the rooms were only different for their moss growths and flower-patches, he had still ventured into each of the rooms. This is lucky. If not for this, he would not have found today's treasure.  
  
A carved crystal - alone in a room no different than any others, buried in the shadows of a clover patch. It was vivid blue on its own, but when held up to those sunbeams it was prismatic, almost unnaturally projecting a rainbow onto the walls around him. It was shaped in a diamond, jutting out on one side, but near-flattened on the other. Ezreal knows this pattern, knows that this means it is meant to be embedded in something.  
  
He knows, because its back is smooth in the same ways as the round crystal in his gauntlet.  
  
A ruin with no architectural past, holding a crystal with no mount. Is it from Shurima, like his own? He does not think so. He can feel magic from it, a vague and confusing aura. He has never been as good with this as he would like. That's the trouble with natural skill in taboo arts. It's in your blood, not your brain. He does not have the scholarly research to understand it.  
  
And while it's all fine and good to mess around in Piltover and Zaun – cities of no fear, no inhibitions... Even their scholars are not much help when it comes to magic studies. He has heard that Demacia might have been a good place to start. Once, in the past. Not so long ago, but long enough that he is afraid to try it, now.  
  
Better to run on unstudied instinct than to be run out of a kingdom. It's strange to be inherently hated by such an influence on the world.  
  
He wants to compare the feeling of this particular magic with his collection at home. He wants to see if anything lines up. He does not think it will.  
  
This magic feels foreign.  
  
So maybe it is curiosity alone that has him rushing, has him taking shortcuts that push his magic past his limits. Maybe that's a factor.  
  
Between here and there, something goes wrong. The golden magic shimmers up around him, in front of him – and then it is behind him with the river. Point A to point B, nothing to it.  
  
Except it isn't just him. The golden light is matched with a neon blue. His ears ring with a sound he cannot place, and then his footsteps touch down on the shore-side pebbles. Only for a moment, before a heavy weight crashes into him with the momentum of his leap.  
  
It is a good thing he is so used to collapsing ruins. He knows how to catch himself and keep from knocking his chin on the rocks. He isn't wearing his gloves, though, and his hands scratch up. No worse than cave-climbing, he tells himself, gritting his teeth. No worse than rope-burn.  
  
The weight on top of him scrambles up, making wordless sounds of confusion.  
  
Ezreal begins pulling himself up, eyes traveling up unquestionably feminine legs. There is a wing motif to her shining military boots, the curve of her knees and thighs covered in skin-tight blue. The edges of white skirts loop just past her hips,  and she shifts her weight as she turns to take in her surroundings.  
  
“–Oh, oh,” she eventually manages, sounding oddly calmer. “Ezreal, what did you do?”  
  
He tears his gaze up from her legs.  
  
She is back-lit by the sun, her shoulder-length blonde hair haloed bright. Her armor is military, simple, but seems designed for looks and mobility over protection. The colors and wing motifs give her away as Demacian in an instant.  
  
He does not know this girl. What sort of Demacian soldier is not dressed for close-combat or for stealth when there are no mages among them? It doesn't look like the garb of an archer or a ranger.  
  
It is only when she drops down to crouch beside him that he realizes he has been staring. He does not bother to stop. The sun catches behind trees now, and he can see the way her hair falls around her face more clearly. He can see her long eyelashes and the clear sky-blue of her eyes. The river flows loudly beside them.  
  
“Are you alright?” She asks, but before he can answer she spots his hands. She grabs at them and stands, pulling him up with her. He has to bite his cheek to keep from hissing at the sting. “Oh, Ezreal! I'm so sorry! I'm fairly sure this was your fault and not mine, of course, but I still don't want you getting hurt! Come on, let's wash your hands.”  
  
She begins to tug him closer to the river. The first thing he wants to know is why she thinks the river is any cleaner than the rocks right beside it. The second thing he wants to know is “–who are you?”  
  
It comes out more severely than he had meant. The girl freezes. Standing, the shadows are back across her face as her eyebrows furrow. She asks, cautiously, “Ezreal?”  
  
He nods. It is not strange for people to know his name. Granted, they usually think it belongs to some heroic rich-boy like Jayce, but he's pretty alright with disappointing people.  
  
At her troubled expression, the thought crosses his mind that he does not really want to disappoint this particular person. Which is baffling, since he does not even know her. The list of people he hopes to impress has always been short. His uncle. Caitlyn. Janna, if she even exists – childish though it may be, he likes the myths. They remind him of his parents, and he is more willing to believe in her than that they live. It would not be such a disappointment to be proven wrong.  
  
Janna is as much of a miracle as he's willing to believe exists. She's as close to a God as he can imagine.  
  
Family, and the sheriff, and a God – that's what this stranger is on par with, based on nothing more than a hard fall and hurt hands. Ezreal is not sure what this says about himself as a person, but it is probably not good. He tells himself there is no 'pretty enough' to justify  this.  
  
She asks, “where are we?”  
  
He does not point out that she has not answered his question. “Couple miles from Piltover.”  
  
Her eyes dart around again. She is spinning slowly in place without letting go of his hand. He suspects she has merely forgotten she is holding it. He does not care enough to remind her.  
  
“And the date?”  
  
“October.”  
  
She frowns, but does a poor job of not looking amused anyway. “That's just a month. Come on, now.”  
  
“Second week? I think?”  
  
Ezreal is not so great at keeping track of time during expeditions. Why bother? He does not have anywhere to be. Anyone to miss. He does not care for holidays or celebrations or schedules really at all, so there is no need to know exactly when it is.  
  
This time the girl smiles, still looking somewhat weary. “And this isn't some... Joke, like the ones you play on the journalists? You really don't know who I am?”  
  
Ezreal shakes his head. He is never up to date on who is famous. This sort of thing bores him. “Journalists?”  
  
The smile fades from her face once more. “Has anything happened to you recently that could have impacted your memory? An injury or any sort of artifact?”  
  
He fights back the impulse to cock his head towards his backpack over his shoulder. Maybe her act here is all just a ruse. Some kind of bandit lie to steal his findings after he put in all the work. It wouldn't be the first time. His gauntlet helps him to feel magic out, like it's filtering the mana from the air, like it's translating. Even if his memory was altered, he is sure he would feel the particular type of magic in action.  
  
The crystal was strange, but it is not any stranger than this girl.  
  
“No, nothing.” He says, playing along with her questions. He adds, an off-handed joke, “no recent visits to the Rock-Hag.”  
  
She tilts her head to the side, still not looking away from his face. She does not look at him like he is unfamiliar – not like the way that he is still taking her in. He is studying her like something brand new, and she is looking at him as if she has done so every day of her life. “The Rock-Hag,” she repeats, slowly.  
  
Ezreal rolls his eyes. If word of that witch's magic has reached even Piltover, when the lady herself is closer to Demacia's borders, there is no reason this girl should not know who she is. Demacians want to distance themselves from magic so desperately that it's almost pathetic.  
  
“I don't – I...” She trails off, helplessly. “What are you saying?”  
  
If it is an act, it is a good one. “Look, I don't know what got you here. It wasn't my magic, and it couldn't have been yours, obviously. Demacian and all that.” This is a lie, but he does not want to deal with someone as stubborn as they tend to be. Having to deal with over-defense dramatics may be more of a hassle than the solution is even worth. He continues, “but I want to get going. If you need a map, I've got one that I can give you.”  
  
“I'm Luxanna,” she blurts out, yanking his hands up in the space between them. She leans close in her desperation, squeezes tight, and it is only his hiss that seems to get her to realize they have been holding hands all this time. She lets go in a hurry, face flushing, but the embarrassment does not touch her voice through the dismay. “Luxanna Crownguard! You just visited me in Demacia last week! We meet at the Institute of War headquarters for briefings every other month! And I'm – of course I have magic, Ezreal, I'm a mage.”  
  
He pulls his hands back and rubs his thumb over the scratches on his palm, as if replacing the hurt she caused with his own somehow makes it better. His eyes scan across her face for any signs of lying. Last month he was at home the whole month – a rarity. And a Demacian would never so openly, so adamantly, admit to being a mage. The name Crownguard sounds familiar, somewhat.  
  
But the thing that is bothering him the most is something else. “What's the Institute of War?”  
  
“I'm going home with you,” she announces, again failing to answer him. “We're going to figure out what's going on.”  
  
“Uh, pass?”  
  
Luxanna huffs, and sets her hands on her hips sternly. “Then give me that map! I'll show you.”  
  
He digs out his map from his bag, thankful for its usual disarray that allows him to keep the crystal hidden from sight. Whatever is going on here, true or not, does not change that she may be a thief.  
  
His map of Valoran is huge – and more crumpled than it is folded. But he spreads it out for her in front of him.  
  
Luxanna squints at it, and Ezreal watches her eyes scan from corner to corner. Her gaze darts from point to point, expression growing more and more confused.  
  
“This is Valoran?” She asks, as if unsure. But there is recognition on her face. Before he can answer, she is murmuring, “No, that's not right. The institute should be right here, it should be on all of the maps in circulation, and... Demacia's shape is wrong. Noxus is too far from – what is this? Ezreal, where did you get this?”  
  
He is vaguely annoyed with how frequently she uses his name – as if she is trying to insist to him that she knows him. He crumples the map back up and shoves it into his backpack again, ignoring her quiet sound of protest.  
  
“Look, I don't know you. I don't know what you're talking about.” Ezreal reminds her. “Just because you're a pretty girl who knows my name doesn't mean you can just follow me home.”  
  
Luxanna's face does an interesting thing. She glances up with interest, as if he has said something fascinating, then just as quickly drops back into her confusion. “Is there anything I can do to – anything to prove that I'm not lying? I think it's pretty clear that some sort of magic interference occurred with your arcane shift and the teleportation spell I was practicing, but I don't know how to draw conclusions about–”  
  
“–Stop,” Ezreal commands, somehow annoyed by her rambling. By the way she casually drops information like it was common sense, like she had assumed he knew. He hadn't had a chance to think of these these details like she apparently has been.  
  
She frowns, but obediently quiets. The way she says, “sorry,” is almost reflexive, and somehow strikingly casual compared to the rest of her formal speech habits. Like a joke.  
  
One thing at a time, Ezreal tells himself, and begins the walk back towards home. He had said not to follow, but nods for her to join him. There is no point wasting time standing around when they can talk as they travel.  
  
“So, first – teleportation spell?” Ezreal asks.  
  
Luxanna glances over to him. Side by side he realizes that she is just an inch or two taller. “From on the fields. I've used it through summoners, and it always seems to slip away from me after a battle. I've been trying to recreate the spell on my own, in my spare time. I may have... Borrowed some scrolls from the Institute.”  
  
“I don't follow any of that.”  
  
She frowns, her shoulders drooping, but does not complain. She is resigned to explaining, “the Institute of War summons us to the Fields of Justice. We represent our factions and kingdoms in strategic combat, with the help of summoners, to solve political disputes. This way the magic is mediated and damage to Runeterra is avoided, or at the very least contained. It prevents a Rune War.”  
  
It sounds like the solution a child would come up with, but she speaks of it so seriously.  
  
At his silence, she elaborates, “one of the abilities are summoners are able to imbue us with is teleportation, honed on the crystals in the minions of battle or embedded in the towers.”  
  
His head is starting to hurt, trying to piece all these new concepts together into something more coherent than the words of someone with more context than him.  
  
“So you represent Demacia in those fights?”  
  
She brightens. “Of course. They call me the Lady of Luminosity, but I'm not just a light mage, you know.”  
  
That's the one thing he cannot wrap his head around. “Demacia hates magic. You would never be able to represent Demacia as an open magic user.”  
  
“But I do,” Luxanna says, quiet. She sounds weakened by his words.  
  
“I saw your magic,” he says, at length. “I saw the blue. And felt it. Your teleportation spell or whatever. So I guess... I believe you. This is just crossed wires. You're from a different Valoran. There's no need to fuss over that detail or waste time with disbelief.”  
  
She does not reply, but nods like she had long-since come to the same conclusion. In a world like this, where magic is sought to be destroyed far before understood, it is jarring to have someone hear him out like this.  
  
They walk in silence. He supposes it makes sense that she would still follow him, even after clearing that up. Where else would she go? Not to Demacia, radiating magic like she does, never having hidden it in her life.  
  
“And you – know me? Personally?” Ezreal asks, somewhat curious about this potential other world self of his.  
  
“You fight for Piltover in the League of Legends,” she says. He can deduce that this is the system the Institute of War created. She laughs to herself, raising a hand to cover her mouth politely. “Your gauntlet – the gem in it must have reacted with the summoning magic. You were called to battle by mistake, at first. They wanted to take it from you. You only agreed to fight if they let you keep it.”  
  
Ezreal perks up curiously. “They wanted to take it?” He repeats, and can hear the disapproval in his own voice. He doesn't know why he is at all invested in another him, but this Institute sounds terrible.  
  
“Mm. They take magic artifacts frequently, to keep them out of the wrong hands. We're able to use them during combat, if we wish. But they allowed you to keep it for your service within the Institute. Unlike many of us, you didn't initially have any personal investment in participation.”  
  
Ezreal supposes having to fight for his city-state is a sacrifice he would make to keep his gauntlet. He can't imagine trying to navigate his powers without it, anymore. In such a short time, it has become a part of him.  
  
Luxanna is quiet for a long moment, like she is choosing her words carefully. “We became... Friends. Yes.” Then, as if she is marveling at the revelation, “we're friends.”  
  
“Are we now,” he asks, because looking so amazed by the concept casts doubt.  
  
She laughs like she is startled to, and claps her hands in front of her mouth as if to hide it. “We are!”  
  
He can't imagine it. Ezreal does not keep many friends at all, let alone high-class girls like this. Brilliant girls who sound delighted to thoughtlessly outsmart him, who bubble up even in their distress. He can't picture himself getting along with her, really. Not even in another world.  
  
Luxanna catches the skeptical look on his face and grins. “Yes, that seems about the right expression.”  
  
He arches an eyebrow at her, but she has quickly moved on to watching the landscapes ahead of them, smile softening.  
  
“Sometimes you bring me rocks.”  
  
Ezreal's step falters, just slightly. If she notices, she does not show it.  
  
She simply continues, clearly amused, “not pretty ones. Not gemstones or crystals or even anything smooth and shiny. Just rocks like any of these around us.”  
  
He thinks of the countless rocks in his home, brown and dull and nothing special. No one else would want them, he knows. He isn't even entirely sure why he still collects them. Sometimes he even thinks they are a joke he is telling to himself.  
  
Luxanna continues, “you've even stopped taking me with you to awful dark caves. Now you bring me to the nice hideaways in the forests and to the rivers.”  
  
He hates sharing his secret places. He hates it. A bit irrationally, considering he shamelessly seeks out the places other people whisper of. He tirelessly finds the hidden places of the world. Shiny secrets to collect in his memories. He absorbs the air of these isolated hideaways of the world into his skin and burns their image into his mind and they become his.  
  
The idea of him sharing those things with her is strange. Unlike so many from Piltover, he is no artist. A cartographer at best, but he does not create. He only finds, analyzes, theorizes, pillages. He immortalizes what exists like an infinite archive inside his body.  
  
Places and traces - these things are his. Why would he thrust them into the arms of some girl?  
  
It makes it sound like – something else. Something he doesn't want to admit to, because as pretty as this girl is, Ezreal doesn't do romance. And even if he did, he can't imagine her being the type he'd go for. Even another him.  
  
She is smiling at him knowingly, like she is in on a secret, and the sunlight is golden on her cheeks.  
  
“Anyway,” she says, “I suppose that means our next step is to determine what got our magics to interfere with each other, and to learn to recreate it in reverse. Once I know the source, this should be easy.”  
  
The source of the interference seems clear enough. The only variable. The prismatic crystal from the ruins. Maybe an interaction with the gem of his gauntlet, if the story of her world's Ezreal's summoning is any indicator. Whatever it is, he is sure it will be a long process. Better to wait and figure it all out at home than try to talk magic theory on the road.  
  
***  
  
They are quiet for a long stretch of time. Luxanna keeps pace with him with no trouble, seeming pleased in the outdoor air.  
  
When she does speak up, she is more distant than she had been before, as if being a stranger to him has finally settled in. “You mentioned that Demacia doesn't approve of magic, is that correct?”  
  
He turns to look at her, taking in her expression. Caitlyn has told him that shamelessly staring at people is a bad habit of his. If she is friends with an Ezreal, he figures, she should be used to it.  
  
Luxanna looks downcast. If she is respected in the Demacia she knows, is openly a mage, he doesn't blame her. He just doesn't really want to deal with it, either.  
  
He can't think of anything comforting to say to her. “Magic causes Rune Wars, so. It's a pretty recent thing. This generation's taken the brunt of the condemning.”  
  
Luxanna frowns. “Then what of the allyship between Demacia and Ionia...?”  
  
“Ionia's got a complicated relationship with magic to begin with, even before Rune Wars. And I'm not real up-to-date, but I don't think Demacia cares about anyone but Demacia.”  
  
She looks absolutely bewildered. “In what way?”  
  
Ezreal sighs and waves a dismissive hand in the air. He does not want to get into the politics between Ionians and the Vastaya. Oddly, his refusal to answer and annoyance at the question seems to soothe her.  
  
“I wonder if Taric's world is just a shadow of my own,” she murmurs. “Whenever he speaks of home it seems nothing like what I know, but the more you speak the less I understand.”  
  
This is more interesting. Other worlds and something new. The unknown is leagues better than the muddled mess of what he knows. “Who?” She opens her mouth to answer, but he does not really care, and cuts her off to say, “if there are infinite worlds, it makes sense that some would be similar and some would be different.”  
  
She nods, and then falls quiet for some time.  
  
Ezreal does not mind the quiet. He likes the sounds of the outdoors. The wind in the trees and the animals in the grass. He is unused to company, and so the silence is a comfort.  
  
Still, he cannot really forget her presence. Not when her footsteps are precise like a military march. When he glances in her direction, she always catches him, and offers the polite smile of a stranger. He feels as though there should be more to it. More discomfort than she shows.  
  
He imagines being a stranger to someone you know, imagines being a good girl of Demacia, and imagines a personality as bright and breezy as hers seems. There should be more to her expression.  
  
She must hide things well.  
  
The sun is setting. He doesn't expect to be home until past midnight. Evening air is cool on his cheeks, a welcome relief after a warm day. He watches Luxanna's gaze flicker up to the sky, eyebrows furrowing every-so briefly before she relaxes again.  
  
He doesn't know why he asks. He tells himself he doesn't care. “So we're... Friends?”  
  
He thinks of the way she had laughed like it was a revelation. This time she is more sure of it, smiling to herself with her eyes forward. “Yes, something like that. I don't know that you would say the same, but...” She looks over to him, still smiling. “Yes. Would you like to hear about my Ezreal?”  
  
He shrugs, but does not say no.  
  
The other him is similar enough that she knows this means yes.  
  
“Well... You like to act quite smug. There are times you care so little that you are unaware of others' feelings. There are times you tease by acting as if you are so dull that you don't realize what a nuisance you're being. It seems you're just as much an adventurer in this world as mine, and the gauntlet is largely similar, though yours seems more ornate.”  
  
He holds up his arm, looking over the gauntlet in curiosity. The similarity of their worlds is as strange as their differences. The same magic gauntlet, but a different design for it. The same factions, but different rules and customs. The same threat to the world, but different solutions.  
  
The same people. Slotted into the world, into roles.  
  
He wonders if it is destiny or convenience.  
  
“You're terribly inarticulate when it comes to your moods,” Luxanna continues. “You often begin arguments and disagreements calm and rational and end them in a frustrated silence. Yet there are also times that you surprise me in how you're able to disconnect your emotions from a conversation.”  
  
His face feels hot. It's uncomfortable to have someone nitpicking him – someone who he's never met. He can take the usual mistakes people make about who he is much easier than this, because he knows hat they are baseless.  
  
But this girl has seen his secret worlds.  
  
He grunts in annoyance, not wanting to have to ask her to stop.  
  
She glances his way. Then back ahead. Luxanna murmurs, “it's a miracle that we met. If not for the League of Legends, I would have spent my whole life either in Demacia or on military missions. Few things would have brought me to Piltover. And you have no reason to come to Demacia. Even less to meet nobles or soldiers.”  
  
It's a comfort to be off the topic. He still does not have anything to contribute. Anything he wants to contribute. Luxanna falls into silence.  
  
The stars shine bright overhead, and the shadows of the night cast a beautiful shade of purple on Luxanna's skin.  
  
***  
  
He intends the whole way home that they will get there, discuss matters, and resolve the issue – even if it means staying up to sunrise.  
  
But when they actually arrive, he yawns, and sees the particular way Luxanna's shoulders relax as she enters the warmth of his house. He realizes in an instant it will be impossible to get anything done tonight.  
  
“It's different,” Luxanna says, taking in the architecture with interest. She appears to have dismissed problem solving for the night as well. “Larger than the house I know you to have.”  
  
Ezreal just shrugs, unsure what to say to that. She doesn't seem to mind.  
  
He makes certain his parents' old offices are locked. All the rooms with valuable things are closed off. He believes her, he does, but better safe than sorry with these things.  
  
There are a great many things Ezreal would not mind losing. Expensive things. But he doesn't want to lose anymore traces of his parents. None of their reports, none of their findings can vanish the way they did. He won't let them.  
  
Luxanna seats herself on the living room sofa like she expects to stay there.  
  
“You can sleep in my room,” Ezreal tells her.  
  
“Nonsense,” she says, and tucks her head to hide a small laugh. “You've never shown me such kindness before. No reason to start now.”  
  
It sounds like fondness and an insult at once. His curiosity gets the better of him. “You've stayed the night?”  
  
She blinks, a look of slow realization washing over her face. Her cheeks color, and the implication of that has his own face heating as well, even when she denies it. “Oh, not – not in an illicit way!”  
  
He arches an eyebrow, and wills himself not to care one way or the other.  
  
Luxanna smooths the skirts of her uniform. “It's as I said. Despite the secrecy, I've always slept on the sofa at your home, and that should be an indication plenty of our relationship.”  
  
He continues staring. Repeats, “secrecy?”  
  
He imagines she is good at keeping secrets from others. Maybe she makes mistakes with him because she is used to trusting his name and face.  
  
“Others would leap to the same conclusions you did,” she says, distantly. “It's rather inappropriate for someone like me to stay with... Someone like you?”  
  
Ezreal tries not to wince. He tries not to care at all. Because she has magic in her blood too, magic she's never known to hide. He knows better than to think it's his magic that makes him worthy of being 'someone like you,' but even so. How many people have looked at him as a disgrace to his family name?  
  
And what is it, exactly? What, at the core of Ezreal, is inherently unworthy of someone like Luxanna?  
  
What, at the core of Luxanna, is so much better than him?  
  
Ezreal feels as if all  is doing is repeating the strange things she says. “Someone like me.”  
  
Luxanna suddenly looks distressed, standing up so hurriedly that her knees knock into the coffee table. “Oh! I don't mean anything by that! We're just in very different... Social classes. You understand?”  
  
Crossing his arms over his chest, he reminds himself that she is not really talking about him. Reminds himself not to care. That she is a stranger. He mutters, “how touching,” and kind of enjoys seeing the hope fade from her tentatively offered smile.  
  
“I'm sorry,” she says.  
  
He just shakes his head and gathers up spare bedding for her. When he returns to the living room with it, she has set aside her armor. She looks somewhat awkward in just the bodysuit beneath. He considers for a moment, then brings her an old shirt and a pair of sweatpants.  
  
Luxanna takes them in her hands, then holds them to her chest like something precious or familiar. Like she needs an anchor, and has chosen this, despite how unsuited it is to the role.  
  
Even the house of a friend is not familiar for her, today. Even her friend himself. It's hard to stay angry.  
  
“We'll get it sorted out in the morning,” Ezreal says.  
  
His house feels foreign with her in it. His bedroom door is closed behind him, everything he cares for is behind locks. She is sleeping, as far as he can tell, and no odd-hour light is slipping under his door like a reminder that he doesn't have to rest if he doesn't want to.  
  
It's hard to sleep. Ezreal has always had this trouble. The moon is bright and sharp outside his window, like it could cut through the glass. A light so piercing that it could slice through the universe and into another.  
  
How do you sleep with possibilities like that? How do you rest when there is so much more to see?  
  
He tries to think of questions to ask her.  
  
***  
  
There is breakfast on the table when he wakes. Luxanna is dressed again, though the military wear seems unsuited to being indoors. He supposes she doesn't have any other options.  
  
“You actually keep food in your house,” Luxanna marvels. He does not say thank you,  but takes a seat at the table and eats in silence. It's unnerving to have her watching him, but she must have already eaten.  
  
She watches him like she is taking him apart piece by piece, like she is asking him questions in her mind. You are Ezreal, but you are not. Who are you, to me?  
  
Who am I, to you?  
  
No one, he would tell her, but she doesn't ask.  
  
Nothing seems out of place around him. If she has looked through his things, there is no trace of it.  
  
“Tell me something to prove you are who you say you are.”  
  
Luxanna has already moved on to washing the dishes she had dirtied, her back turned to Ezreal, form unreadable. “I wonder what would qualify. Has what I've said of the Ezreal I know not sufficed?”  
  
“You could just be a stalker.”  
  
“Then they were accurate.” He doesn't like the way she twists this. She is quiet as the water runs from the tap, then as pans clink against each other on the drying rack. “I don't know how to prove anything to you.”  
  
“It would help to compare you to the Luxanna I know,” Ezreal says. Then, at the way Luxanna looks over her shoulder with too much light in her wide eyes, he corrects, “I mean the one from my world.”  
  
“We could travel to Demacia. See if I'm recognized. See if we can find the Lux of this world,” Luxanna offers, turning around to face him, resting her weight against the counter's edge. He sees her eyes dart to his empty plate, and resents the satisfied tilt of her head.  
  
“I'm not bringing you anywhere near Demacia,” Ezreal says. It takes an effort to be patient through his annoyance. “You're leaking magic everywhere, you'll get killed. Or you'll get another Luxanna killed.”  
  
Her shoulders slouch at the reminder. She looks down at her hands in wonder. It has never occurred to her to hide her magic. Not for a second. He can feel it flowing through the room, out of his house, powerful and bright. It hadn't been so strong in the evening air on the road, but now the magic has been seeping into everything he owns all night.  
  
“What about you?” She asks.  
  
He pretends not to understand. “What about me?”  
  
“You have magic, too. Is it truly just Demacia?”  
  
Ezreal pushes his plate away from him and rests his cheek on his palm. “My magic's not as intense as yours. And I can hide it well enough.”  
  
Well, he still doesn't want to throw himself to the wolves like that. Ezreal knows that he only got this gauntlet because he is a lucky disaster. He isn't going to risk losing it the same way he had made risks when he had nothing to lose. He isn't sure how to explain the ebbing, infectious spread of Demacia's ideology to someone so stranger to it.  
  
In the quiet, Lux takes his plate, and murmurs, “well. Things have never been as good as they seem, anyway.”  
  
When she is finished washing it and setting it to dry, Ezreal nods to the door. “I won't take you to Demacia, but I have an idea.”  
  
***  
  
The North Central library is the biggest in Piltover. Ezreal thinks this is probably why his parents chose to live in its district – chose to live in Piltover at all.  
  
He thinks of his mother and father, noses buried in books every time he found them. He thinks of laying on the living room floor with whatever they were finished with, remembers discussions at the dinner table about what they had read flying far over his head.  
  
He hasn't been here in years. Not since they disappeared.  
  
Luxanna marvels at the city the whole way there. Civilians marvel at her.  
  
Ezreal isn't sure if it's the obscene amounts of magic that follow behind her like footprints in sand or if it's something else. Maybe she has a familiar face. Crownguard. Crownguard. It's a familiar name, even to him. He wonders how important she can be.  
  
He glances over. She is just slightly taller than him, he realizes. Her fingers are over her mouth like she wants to hide the quiet gasps she is letting out at all the sights. Her blue eyes land on screens embedded in the walls, on speakers that spew daily announcements, in the piping that travels all along the walls and the gears turning together to run a thousand clocks on a thousand building-sides.  
  
Maybe people are just staring because she is pretty. He can kind of understand that.  
  
The library hasn't changed in the past couple of years. Luxanna looks starry eyed at the sight of so many books – it reminds him of his mother, vaguely. He recalls walking here hand-in-hand, still young enough that it was necessary. (He remembers losing her for hours in the books, in the countless rooms and the numerous floors. For how young he had been at the time, he is not sure if this is an alarming or endearing memory.)  
  
It's easy to find news archives. He expects they will need to look through them for hours to find any mention of her name or anyone she knows.  
  
It takes ten minutes.  
  
First there is an article on a moving statue at the gates of Demacia. Luxanna nearly grabs it from his hand when she sees the sketches, blurting out, “Galio!”  
  
A guardian statue that moves itself. Made in the era before magic was a sin.  
  
So there is magic in Demacia, somewhere.  
  
“He's different, but this is – this is Galio! His face! But he's so much bigger here.”  
  
The library is big enough that he is not concerned with her noise, nor with the way she takes a seat on the floor, dedicated now to reading this report.  
  
Ezreal grabs a number of papers, then sits down beside her, careful to put space between them.  
  
Only a couple of articles later is an expose on the Crownguard family. It branches out into the many noble families under their care, into their endless contributions and responsibilities within and beyond Demacia's borders. There are etchings of them all. Pieter Crownguard and his wife. His children, Garen and Luxanna Crownguard.  
  
It's date is recent. The sketch of Luxanna is unmistakably her, though her hair is longer.  
  
Luxanna leans close. He feels her fingers on his shoulder, her hair tickling his cheek.  
  
“Pieter,” she reads, apparently unbothered by the image of her own doppleganger. “My father's name is Marcus.”  
  
Even Ezreal knows enough to point out, “as in Marcus Du Couteau?”  
  
She makes a face. “Katarina's father? No, that's a simple coincidence. Named for a saint. No one thinks themselves too evil to identify with the winning side of history.”  
  
He isn't sure if she means Noxus or Demacia.  
  
“You sound pretty familiar with her,” he says.  
  
Luxanna nods. “She's another representative in the League of Legends.”  
  
He does not ask anymore questions, and Luxanna falls silent again, staring at the article. Staring now at her own image. A portrait by an artist she has never met, a time frozen that she was never in. Long hair, much longer than hers, with a braid pinned up like a hair-band.  
  
She holds up the two journals, one in each hand. The moving statue and the recent squadron under Luxanna Crownguard's leadership, and whispers, “it's me, isn't it?”  
  
Ezreal does not say anything. He wants to roll his eyes, but he is doing his best to be patient with how out of place she must feel.  
  
He doesn't expect her to elaborate, but she does. “The one moving the statue, I mean. The guardian moves by magic. It's her. Me.”  
  
Ezreal can only shrug, surprised this is where her priorities lay.  
  
“Is this proof enough?” Luxanna asks him, standing up in a hurry and beginning to slide papers back where they belong.  
  
He almost tells her it proves nothing. But he can feel the unconscious movement of her magic in the air, and now he's seen her exact likeness and name, a prolific representative of a kingdom with no mages.  
  
Or so they think.  
  
Maybe the other Luxanna does not have magic at all. Who is to say that magic is a required element of Luxanna across worlds?  
  
They linger a long while. Ezreal sits and watches her flit from shelf to shelf, from paper to paper, like she wants to absorb everything about the world that she can. For a time she even seems to forget he is there at all. He likes this, the familiar thirst for knowledge, the familiar sparkle in her eyes as she soaks up text like a sponge.  
  
He allows her to check out a number of papers in his name, though she's already read through them.  
  
She holds them close to her chest on the trip back to his home.  
  
***  
  
“Now then,” she says, hands on her hips like she owns his home. “If you're satisfied, I've come up with what I think is our best solution.”  
  
He does not point out how easily she involves him. How easily he could say this is not really his problem, shut her out of his home, and purge her troubles from his mind.  
  
He humors her. “And what's what?”  
  
“As I mentioned before, we simply have to recreate it in reverse. Bring out that artifact, won't you?”  
  
Ezreal blinks. “What?”  
  
Luxanna waves her hand in the air. “You know. The artifact. You had it with you when I arrived. It feels like home. I didn't recognize it at the time, but now that I've had time apart from it, I can feel it more acutely. I imagine that's what interfered with our spells. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a duplicate in my world.”  
  
She goes as far as to point in the direction of his room, so accurate that Ezreal is sure he could draw a line from her fingertip straight through to his closet where he had tossed his bag.  
  
There is not much to do in the face of her accurate senses. He retrieves the crystal, and per her suggestion, takes it into the overgrown gardens out back.  
  
His father used to care for them. Ezreal remembers helping him plant seeds, harvest vegetables. Picking snails off the leaves to feed to fish in a pond that has long-since dried up. It always makes him cringe to see the tall, uneven grass where there used to be carefully trimmed rosebushes, but he has no interest in gardening, nor any interest in paying a stranger to put their hands all over his father's garden.  
  
Luxanna does not appear to think anything of it.  
  
She turns the crystal over in her hands. He can feel the flow of mana between it and her fingers; a back and forth exchange as she reads it like he cannot. It's strange to witness. She draws more from it than he could, and he can see on her face that she understands it better. He can almost visualize the magic, like water, pouring endlessly from her palms like it could flood the world.  
  
A girl who has never known limits. He opens his mouth to ask her just how strong she is. He's glad she interrupts.  
  
“–Okay,” Luxanna says, mostly to herself. Then again, “okay.”  
  
Ezreal watches her.  
  
“Well, I don't entirely understand it,” Lux admits. “I'm sure it's a link. But I'm fairly sure I don't need to understand it for what we need to do. For now the two of us need to focus on perfecting our teleportation spells. Well, my teleportation spell. Your arcane shift, I suppose.”  
  
“It's already as accurate as it's gonna get,” Ezreal tells her. He flexes his hand in his gauntlet. Maybe without this, it would not work so well. He isn't sure. He doesn't like to think about the barriers between what is his and what is the gauntlet's. What is skill and what is artifact.  
  
“When you cast it, do you visualize traveling from one place to another? Or do you visualize travel?”  
  
“The former,” Ezreal says, slowly, already catching on.  
  
Luxanna nods. “That's what I thought. What we need to focus on is lingering in the space between. This goes for myself as well.”  
  
Ezreal bites back his complaints, satiated by her own inclusion.  
  
And so they practice.  
  
He's sure it looks rather silly from the outside. Luxanna is working off of memories of scrolls, off of feeling out the magic from a crystal she knows little about, off of observing his arcane shifts. Meanwhile he is jumping – point A to point B. Short distances, trying to linger in the in between as long as he can.  
  
It happens in an instant, too fast for him to grasp. He leaves the air and he lands. A longer jump doesn't change how quick it is, how fleetingly he is in neither place at all.  
  
He stops when he feels tired, groaning in frustration.  
  
Luxanna gives him a small smile which he is sure is meant to be a comfort. As if to assure him that he is fine to take a break, fine to rest when she does not.  
  
He watches her, instead. Her spell is different from his, much slower and stronger. He watches it disintegrate before it begins, watches her expression fall into frustration.  
  
He watches for nearly two hours of this, thinking every couple of minutes that he should stop her, but finding himself too captivated by the way she breaks down more and more. Her irritation and desperation chip away at her determined smiles.  
  
He is sitting, leaning against the wall when she collapses onto her knees, gritting her teeth and scrubbing once at her eyes. She stands to try once more, the magic at her hands sparking weakly, and Ezreal calls out, “maybe take a break?”  
  
“I have responsibilities back home to tend to,” she says, and her voice is flat, like she is too tired to emote at all. This is more startling to him than any of her moods, but he does his best to ignore it.  
  
“Think of it as a vacation.”  
  
“Ezreal,” she scolds him, like reflex, not so much as looking his way.  
  
He mimics her tone thoughtlessly, “Lux.”  
  
Luxanna whirls to look at him, betrayal on her face, and he feels the sudden stop of her spell, like a door to her mana slammed shut by the wind. His stomach drops with a sense of guilt he doesn't fully understand.  
  
“I mean,” he amends, uncomfortable, “Luxanna.”  
  
She comes to sit beside him, soothed. Their arms brush against each other, and he does not pull away. She allows herself to rest her head on his shoulder, a strange intimacy for a girl who will tell him so little, who gets angry at familiarity. He knows she is swallowing her thoughts, and knows he has no right to ask.  
  
But he knows she will tell him nothing if he does not. “What are you thinking?”  
  
“About responsibility.” He is surprised she answers. More surprised when she asks, “what about you?”  
  
“About you.”  
  
“Then we're thinking of the same thing.” Luxanna laughs weakly, though Ezreal does not entirely follow. She asks, “what do you think of me?”  
  
“Not sure. What do you think about responsibility?”  
  
“Maybe another time,” she dismisses him.  
  
Ezreal makes their dinner when night falls, because by then he is not sure Luxanna could stand long enough to do it. And, well, she cooked the night before. Fair is fair. She sits at the dining room table and watches him with her head resting on her arms as a pillow.  
  
“Who are your friends?” She asks him, her voice heavy with sleep. “Without the League that ties you to so many...”  
  
Ezreal has never been particularly ashamed of having no real ties to others. If anything, he has taken pride in it. Suddenly, it feels shameful, and he does not want to answer her.  
  
“What sort of friends does the other Ezreal keep?” He asks, instead.  
  
“Hmm. Myself, of course. We're some of the closest in age. I believe you're also–”  
  
“–He,” Ezreal corrects, idly.  
  
“I believe he is also close with Taric, and with Vi, and with Janna.”  
  
His brain stutters. “What now? Janna?”  
  
She does not see what has him startled. “Yes. She's patient with your immaturity.”  
  
Elaborating on this sounds like more than he has the energy for, but Luxanna sits up and becomes invested in checking into something in the papers she checked out. She mumbles under her breath, Taric, Taric, Taric, flipping through.  
  
She doesn't appear to like what she reads, squinting at it. Like him, she does not have the energy for a conversation about it.  
  
His mind replays the thought from when she first crashed into him. A girl who he had given the consideration he gives to a God. And in another world, an Ezreal who gives a God the same consideration as a girl.  
  
They eat in relative quiet, with only small interruptions to discuss their spells. The way she can articulate the magic into steps is easy to follow, but impossible for him to match. It's all intuition. He isn't sure if it's insulting or not that she does not expect him to keep up.  
  
He does the dishes, not because he is a tidy person by nature, but because she had done them right away when she had cooked for him. Interacting with her, even just acting around her is still tense and performative.  
  
He is entirely unused to caring what others think so acutely. Beyond a simple desire to prove them wrong.  
  
He isn't sure what he wants her to think of him, and he still isn't sure what he thinks of her.  
  
***  
  
The next day they repeat their practice. Luxanna does not overwork herself to near-fainting this time, though there is something to the sight of her wiping sweat from her forehead. Bangs stuck to her forehead from the exertion, brow furrowed and hair a tangled mess from running her fingers through it too many times.  
  
She catches him staring, and seems amused by the guilty jolt of his shoulders, though he doesn't look away. The way she grins is embarrassed, like she thinks she is the one who was caught out.  
  
It is somewhat easier to linger in his shifts. He can feel the split second delay. The pause before he arrives.  
  
The problem is that he cannot stay there. There is no consciousness during that moment.  
  
The rhythm of it is easy to fall into. Maybe because she is familiar with him. He has no excuse for why it is so easy for him.  
  
They practice each day. Lux works herself ragged, but Ezreal is lazy enough to balance it. She takes breaks when he does. They trade off cooking.  
  
When they rest, they sit beside each other. Too close, he knows. Too close for strangers, too close for acquaintances.  
  
Too close for whatever friendship she says they have.  
  
Maybe he just has so few friends that he is out of touch. But if he had to guess, he imagines this is something like a dream for her. He has the face of who she knows, a similar enough personality. But she can shape their interactions differently, knowing that she will wake up and return home in time. There's some kind of freedom in that.  
  
Each day she asks him, as if mocking his question from their first day, “what are you thinking about?”  
  
He tells her, “you,” because she is the only thing worth thinking about right now. She is the oddity in a familiar house in a familiar city in a familiar world. He knows t would be easy to take the wrong way, but she does not. He asks, “what are you thinking?”  
  
She does not answer, for a few days, beyond a vague, “magic.”  
  
Eventually she concedes to more depth. One day she answers, “limitations. Whether I am more powerful for never having hidden my magic, never having held myself back... Or whether the Lux of this world is more powerful for having to train herself in another way.”  
  
The next, “templates, I suppose. Is your world based on mine? Is mine based on yours? Are there more of them? How far do they deviate? What are the unchangeable things, and which world is correct?”  
  
Her eyes shine, the next day, when he falls from his arcane shift a step too hard. Falls heavy, because for a moment he had been afloat in a space between. An empty place, an endless place, infinite and fleeting.  
  
She thoroughly interrogates him. Tries (and fails) to make him replicate it.  
  
When they take their break, she looks out at the garden. Or what was once a garden.  
  
Luxanna asks, “what are you thinking about?”  
  
“You,” Ezreal says. Luxanna laughs. “What are you thinking?”  
  
“About you,” she answers, for the first time.  
  
Ezreal cannot bring himself to look at her, knows that he will blush if he does, and that would be so juvenile that he does not want to. He looks out at the ruins of a garden. This is just as much a trace of long-lost people as the ruins he explores.  
  
Luxanna continues, “a you without me, and what that looks like.”  
  
“It looks like this,” Ezreal points out.  
  
“Sort of,” Luxanna says, bumping her shoulder pointedly against his.  
  
“We that close?” Ezreal asks, and he isn't sure if he is asking about him or not-him.  
  
“As close as I can get with people,” she answers. It's an answer that is so painfully precise that he does not know how to respond. He realizes that her shoulder-bump has left their hands closer together than they were before. Their pinkies line up parallel.  
  
“And how close is that?”  
  
“Not as close as I'd like.” She doesn't give him time to respond. “Are you always alone?”  
  
“Let's get back to practicing.”  
  
So they do.  
  
***  
  
“I was wondering if we might go out for breakfast,” Luxanna says the next morning. “I don't want to impose, though, so it's only a thought.”  
  
She has been wearing his clothes, but this time he does his best to find something more presentable for her.  
  
They walk somewhat aimlessly, making their way to the nearest shopping district. Ezreal allows Luxanna to pick whichever food cart she likes, and they walk while they eat. She follows him without question, happy to take in the sights and today's cool weather.  
  
He brings her to a clothing store. It isn't exactly high fashion, like he's sure a noble girl is used to, but he doesn't have a huge budget.  
  
He has never really been shopping with anyone besides family. He finds himself trailing after her in the shops, feeling awkward and out of place when he was the one that brought them to begin with. But isn't so bad to watch her hands flow through racks, fingers sorting through blouse after blouse. She murmurs quiet thoughts on everything, off-handed analytics of the differences in Demacian and Piltover fashions, her preferences, the colors, the materials.  
  
The thought crosses his mind, as she compares embroideries, that Luxanna knows everything.  
  
He is an idiot.  
  
For how brightly she smiles at him when she has made her selections, he can't imagine how she would have reacted to a more expensive store. She picks out only two outfits. Simple skirts and blouses. A pair of tights and a cardigan.  
  
He hears whispers around them. Is fairly certain he makes out what's a Crownguard doing here – but no one asks. No one approaches. Luxanna does not comment on it, though he can tell she heard by the way she does not meet his eyes unit they are far, far away.  
  
He reminds himself of her words. Someone like him. Reminds himself that she'll only vanish.  
  
***  
  
It's so close, so close to being obtainable.  
  
Ezreal's knees are skinned from an awkward landing. He had seen it. He had seen the space, felt it around him. He had tried to hold onto it and it had slipped away, right through his fingers. The feeling was jarring, coming from such a familiar spell.  
  
As he sits, he tries to focus on the gardens, on the remains of them, on the sunlight on the dirt and on the old, rotted wood box frames.  
  
“What are you thinking about?” Luxanna asks him, still working on her own craft.  
  
“Nothing,” Ezreal answers. “How about you?”  
  
“The garden,” Luxanna says, as if she spares thought to anything but her goal when she is not taking a break. Even as she answers him, her eyes are firmly on the ground in front of her. She sounds distracted, and her magic is twisting in the air. “It's in awful shape.  
  
“Unless you want to add gardening to your daily ritual here,” Ezreal tells her, sarcastic, “you'll have to get over it.”  
  
He doesn't expect her to even consider it. Still, she pauses what she's doing as if quietly mulling over the thought. Then resumes her spell as she admits, “I don't know the first thing about gardening, I'm afraid.”  
  
Well, Ezreal thinks, feeling hopeless. At least there's something she doesn't know.  
  
***  
  
The moon is high in the sky, almost so high that it isn't casting light into his bedroom any longer. The next time light comes in, it will be dawn, in only a couple of hours.  
  
Instead, there is a light sneaking in from under his door.  
  
He follows it. Out to the living room, where Luxanna is sitting up over the papers from the library. He needs to return them, soon. The downcast expression on her face makes him think he should have done it the day they went out shopping.  
  
She doesn't look up. “Did I wake you?”  
  
“How would you have?” He asks, gruffer than he means to.  
  
She smiles, eyes still on the papers. He sits down beside her, and is not really surprised that she leans into his shoulder.  
  
“I understand why we can't go there,” Luxanna says, “but I wish I could see Demacia.”  
  
Ezreal almost tells her figure out your spell and we'll go. Somehow that feels more intimate than her head on his shoulder. He is not so close as to make those kinds of deals with her. To take on that responsibility. Midnight makes you too open.  
  
“You know – the Ezreal in my world is in love with me, probably,” Luxanna says, at length.  
  
Ezreal tenses against his will, unsure what he is supposed to take from that. Her head rests on his shoulder, bowed in effort not to look at him.  
  
He says, “can't say the same,” and it isn't a lie, not really. It feels like one in his mouth. It feels like an eventual inevitability. One that will be cut short, he reminds himself.  
  
“Of course not,” Luxanna says, like she is chastising him for reading into it at all.  
  
She doesn't tell him how she feels, but it isn't hard to figure out. He doubts the other Ezreal has even told her. She's just observant. Knows him well. The idea that she can read him the way she does him without the mutual understanding is almost nauseating.  
  
He doesn't know enough to love her. He thinks of the things his father loved about his mother, whether he could put them into words or not. Her passions, her excitements, the movements of her hands and her mind. That image of love is hard to match with someone you've only known for such a short time.  
  
“I can't imagine hiding who I am,” Luxanna says, switching gears completely. Ezreal tries not to reel from this, forces himself to abort the other train of thought.  
  
He tells her, “everyone does, to an extent.”  
  
“I know,” Luxanna says. After a long moment, perhaps only because of the hour, she adds, “I never wanted to join the military. I know that my kingdom is not always just. And I don't always know if I resent my family or my kingdom more. I don't know if I'm proud of who I am or angry that I had to become me.”  
  
He lets her talk herself through it, knowing there is nothing he can say to her to help.  
  
He doesn't know how long they sit together before parting ways for sleep.  
  
***  
  
Luxanna figures out her spell first, because of course she does. She is working to cast it, Ezreal watching during one of many less-motivated-than-Luxanna induced breathers. Then she is gone, leaving behind a brief blue halo, then nothing.  
  
He is still blinking at the empty space with an odd hollowness in his chest when she throws open the back door from inside, holding the crystal in her hand. She is too excited to use words, apparently, and just holds up the crystal more aggressively, bouncing on her heels with pride.  
  
She closes the door behind her, sets the crystal down carefully, and takes a moment to collect herself. Then begins speaking, rapid-fire fast. “This still requires practice, but it's an amazing improvement! To think that I could master the spell of a summoner without even the reference materials! I'll continue working on this, but having completed it, the difference really is night and day between what you and I can do. A teleportation has no middle point. The destination is locked in before the departure, and the time spent casting takes the place of any journey. Your arcane shift is what will be the most imperative element. Your arcane shift is so much more malleable, so much faster and more flexible–”  
  
“–Lux,” Ezreal interrupts.  
  
“–Yes,” she replies, instant and obedient, straightening as if her excitement has made her default to military respectfulness. After a beat, she realizes, and breaks back into a grin.  
  
For once, she rests while Ezreal practices. She gives him feedback that he finds hard to follow, instructions too precise for someone running on instinct. And each time he looks at her, she beams, like she has been let in on a precious secret.  
  
She gets it right again the next day. She teleports from where she casts her spell to the crystal across the deck. Then, in her excitement, she bounces over to Ezreal and grabs his hands, holding them up between them.  
  
“Easier and easier!” She enthuses.  
  
He doesn't try to keep the amusement off of his face. There is an awkward beat when she realizes what she is doing, a sort of falter to her steps. Her fingers twitch around his, grip loosening for just a moment.  
  
Her eyes are on his for a moment of recognition, a mutual acknowledging of what this is. Then she squeezes tighter. Her cheeks flush, eyes averting, and she is quick to let go.  
  
After three days of practice, she can do it flawlessly.  
  
It's only his spell that needs work for her to go home.  
  
***  
  
Ezreal has never really understood the way some people interact without words. He understands the concept of social etiquette, though he declines to follow. He reads body language well enough, so it isn't as if he can't tell the moods of others.  
  
The concept isn't difficult. Read others. React. Emote.  
  
Somehow he is always amazed to see it play out, like studying something foreign and impossible. He has always looked at flirting classmates this way, or patrons pairing off at the taverns. What signals can they be reading to reach an understanding on their own intimacy? Just eye contact? Fleeting touches that they do not pull back from?  
  
Even young, he knew that his own parents were a part of this mystery. He's heard from his uncle that when they met, his mother didn't speak a word. She had come from Ionia, met his father literally the day her ship arrived, and learned the language from him. From him, and from her ravenous appetite for books.  
  
But how long must that have taken? How do you forge an entire relationship on body language alone? Not only that, but the body language that comes from another culture, from all the way across the sea?  
  
Of course, Luxanna is not the person to break this confusion. If anything, his relationship with her is inherently complex. She knows him-but-not-him. He does not know her at all. She is always trying to walk on egg-shells and be polite, but falls into familiarity like habit. Or maybe like refuge from habit.  
  
He is having trouble sleeping again. It must be past midnight with the brightness of the moon. Bright enough to read without turning the lights on, which is something, at least.  
  
He leaves his room to retrieve a book from the living room shelves, and quite literally bumps into Luxanna in the hallway. Of course he does. She reaches out to catch his arm, a fast reflex that is entirely unnecessary for how lightly they collided.  
  
The only thing down this hall she'd been walking is his bedroom. Her hand rests on his arm gingerly; does not pull away.  
  
He is overly aware of his own blank expression as he stares at her. Of her heavy eyelids and long eyelashes when she glances down to the floor like she is ashamed to meet his eyes. Her hand slides down his arm until her fingers are on his hand. He turns his hand until they can lace their fingers together.  
  
Wordlessly leading her to his room feels natural. For the first time, he understands the mutual understandings like this.  
  
There is no question when she climbs into his bed. When he climbs over her, kisses her, holds his body against hers.  
  
He likes the way she shivers beneath him, the way she tilts her head, first into the kiss, then away, guiding his mouth along her jaw and neck. He doesn't want to speak and break the spell, but can't help checking. He whispers, “you okay?”  
  
She nods. Her fingers are dancing light against his hips, just under the hem of his shirt. “Nervous. I've never...”  
  
There is some kind of satisfaction to that unspoken admission. In knowing that the Ezreal she knows hasn't seen her like this, touched her like this. That no one has. It's another secret for him to record.  
  
He tries to only hold her lightly, knowing that this is a fleeting pleasure. They are going to get her home, and then she will be gone from his world entirely. He knows she is not delicate, not as breakable as the softness of her skin makes her seem. But she is something that will vanish, and she is unknowable to him.  
  
Luxanna is his polar opposite. Her fingers dig into his back, her hands pull him closer. Her face buries in the crook of his neck. Even when he is sweating, when he knows he is heavy over her, she does not let him go enough for him to draw back.  
  
He doesn't need to ask why.  
  
***  
  
They do not really talk about it in the morning. He had known it was fleeting.  
  
He is escapism for her, and not particularly resentful of it.  
  
It still takes days for him to get his arcane shift down perfectly. Sometimes he is tired and annoyed, and thinks he does not particularly want her to go home anyway, so what is he putting so much effort in for?  
  
He rationalizes that it may be useful, someday. At least all of this work doesn't hurt, at least it is new strength for him. The fruits of his effort won't vanish with her.  
  
But she will vanish. He is starting to resent that.  
  
The first time he is conscious of the space in between is nauseating. Before, the concept of it had been visceral. Empty like an unused subway tunnel, but devoid of even the traces of use before. Anything that enters leaves, and so there is nothing left behind.  
  
But it isn't like a void. A void is a lack of anything, but that moment is in a space. It is empty, but it is a space.  
  
Falling back onto his deck feels like waking up from a dream. Like the ice-water feeling of realizing a dream has gone lucid, then immediately jolting back to consciousness unwillingly.  
  
Luxanna did not see him land, does not know what he's just done, or he wouldn't be hearing the end of it.  
  
She is curiously toeing her way off the deck and onto the stepping stones that lead around the garden.  
  
Ezreal figures it's better to make sure he's mastered it before getting her hopes too high.  
  
It's his turn to feed them for the night. He needs to grocery shop, but instead, when evening falls, asks her, “want to go for a walk? We can get food while we're out.”  
  
She holds his hand while they walk. The sun is already setting when they depart, and by the time they get into the more populated areas of town, the stars are out. Dulled by street lights and steam, but even so, they are vivid.  
  
The city seems different at night. Lit up in countless colors that all seem muddied in the day, the crowds thinned out. The air is cool, even with the heat of overworked hextech about to get its break. He likes walking with her, likes the way quiet is comfortable between them and likes the warmth of her hand.  
  
They eat on a park bench, watching state of the art automated sprinkler systems coat the grass. The orderliness of it reminds him of how the garden used to look.  
  
When they have long since finished, Luxanna asks, “should I be worried about you?”  
  
“No,” Ezreal answers. “Why?”  
  
“I'm going to go home, soon. And I'll have everyone I know in the military and everyone I know in the League of Legends. I'll have the Ezreal I'm used to. And I don't know that you'll have anyone at all.”  
  
Ezreal frowns, arching an eyebrow at her. “I don't need people around all the time.”  
  
“Do you need people around at all?”  
  
“Not really.”  
  
“Here's what I think,” Luxanna says, like presenting a carefully researched hypothesis. “You lost your parents and you're afraid of losing anyone else.”  
  
“Not really?” Ezreal says, uncomfortable with the tension rising inside of him.  
  
“You're more interested in looking at old ruins and hidden places and more interested in taking in the old and storing it inside you than you are in anything that has its own agency. The only new things you want to see are old things, because you can't lose them, and if you do, it's no real loss.”  
  
Ezreal tries to detach himself from his anger, tries to disassociate from it. It doesn't work, and he snaps, “want to know what I think, Lux?”  
  
“Sure,” Luxanna says neutrally, sounding like she is already steeling herself, like she had already resigned himself to his anger before it even materialized.  
  
“You're manipulative and selfish. You think that because you know a version of me, and because you're going to leave, you can do whatever you want here. Like there won't be ripples, or like they won't matter.”  
  
She is quiet, considering this like it was not an insult. “Yes,” she agrees.  
  
He doesn't know how to articulate the rest of his frustration. The frustration that she hears him out but makes no changes. The frustration that nothing he said was revelatory to her.  
  
***  
  
He's able to linger in the space, nine times out of ten. It takes a week that flies by in moments.  
  
He shows Luxanna his parents' study. They spread out their papers and essays and lay on the floor for a whole day just reading them and talking about them, dissecting and playing with the ideas like children. Theories of everything flow through the room overhead. The hardwood floor digs into his back as he stares up at the ceiling through dusty beams of light, and Luxanna laughs, “we haven't done anything today.”  
  
They do laundry. Hanging it all to dry in the sun is nostalgic in a way he doesn't have full memories to understand. He thinks of his parents living in this house. Hanging laundry, cooking meals, reading all day. Together and in love and brilliant. And one day – gone.  
  
On another day they make their way through the ruins of the garden, wading through tall grass. There is a stone pathway with weeds overgrowing each step. It leads around the dried up ponds that are still over-hung by a cherry tree. There used to be rose bushes, then vegetables. A greenhouse behind them. It is empty, but still smells like dirt and dust. Behind the greenhouse is flowers and trees. Peaches and plums and apples and cherries, once lined up straight and pruned to be tidy, now with their branches all tangled up together.  
  
They meet in the middle of the nights, long after parting for sleep. He spends his hours of insomnia beside her on the sofa, asking her questions in his mind that seem impossible to ask out loud. Watching her carefully, carefully, until he is certain that she wants him to kiss her.  
  
It's a week with a hundred snapshots in his mind of Luxanna's fingers touching his, of her different kinds of smiles.  
  
And eventually he is out of excuses.  
  
***  
  
She goes over her plan a dozen times. Ezreal is annoyed right up until the moment comes to put it into action, and then uncertainty sets in.  
  
But he does as she says.  
  
He brings the crystal with him into the space. His world shimmers away, and then he is in the golden nothing, holding onto it as long as he is able. A tunnel from point A to point B. Luxanna's magic swells up and he tries to absorb the overflow just for the help keeping himself here.  
  
She bursts into existence in front of him, her clothes and hair unfurling from her with a blue radiance that fades until only she is left. Ezreal instinctively reaches out at the same time she does, the two of them grasping each other's hands and hurriedly intertwining their fingers.  
  
In between them, the crystal he had let go of floats. It makes this easy. Like a foot in the door, it is less of a strain for Ezreal to hold it.  
  
Lux looks around at the nothingness, briefly overwhelmed. Then she gives Ezreal a soft smile. He feels the shift of her mana, feels the similarity of her teleportation spell flowing from her to the crystal between them.  
  
He bites back a startled yelp as the crystal shoots out it's prismatic light all around them, all around this space between spaces. Its lights do not hit walls, are not limited by barriers, and in the same way they cease to just be lights. Instead of colors there are worlds around them, stripes painted down like holes to another dimension, and Ezreal whirls to take them all in, overwhelmed and starstruck by the infinity of it all.  
  
This would be the ultimate exploration and the clarity that he cannot traverse these realities is somehow heart-wrenching.  
  
Luxanna's hand in his is a warm comfort as they float in the – not nothingness, no, but everything. In a sea of possibilities. He hears her quiet gasp, knows that she is as awed as he is, taking in everything around them. Her hair swirls as if underwater as she whirls her head to look each way.  
  
There are so many worlds, and to look them over is nauseating and wonderful all the same.  
  
“Look,” Luxanna murmurs, and it is disorienting to follow her nod with so much swirling around them.  
  
He follows her gaze, looking into a world like a window. An Ezreal is running down abandoned streets. The buildings are – strange, different from anything he knows. All chrome and future, but broken. Piltover on hyper-drive. There is blue hextech all around, bright and neon, even in the wreckage. Glass cracks under his boots and the screen of his wristband reads him hopeless diagnostics.  
  
Ezreal only has to tilt his head to see another world.  
  
In it, Ezreal and Luxanna are side by side, robes blown astray by the force their magic. They stand over crystal balls, exerting their influence by shouting commands at their summons and at each other all the same. In another world, Ezreal is dressed like nobility, smirking down at Luxanna from above her on a staircase as she waves him away with visible annoyance.  
  
“There are so many,” Luxanna says.  
  
In another world, Ezreal is swimming, breathing under the water with ease, comfortably floating. He is watching the moonlight shimmer on the surface above, listening to the sounds of people celebrating at a festival nearby.  
  
In the next, Luxanna walks through the forest at twilight, thumbing over the knife handle held tight in her hand. The leaves on the tree glow bright, bright blue, so aggressively that they bleed out the orange sunset.  
  
Even at a glance, Ezreal can tell that there are so many worlds where they are together. But there are just as many where they are not. Ezreal does not know how to say it out loud.  
  
In a world, Garen hovers over Luxanna's body, hunched over and wracked with silent tears. In another, Ezreal is old and tired, but insists on continuing his travels anyway.  
  
In a world as good as a shadow to theirs, Luxanna feeds the crows in Noxus. She wears a black rose in her hair and a holds nothing but darkness in her heart. In another world she sits on tall spires and looks down on an army of monsters at her command; the world is torn apart into nothing, and a prophet beside her smiles.  
  
In another, she wears the gauntlet and Ezreal, in shining silver armor, tries to sooth her adventurous spirit.  
  
In one world Ezreal jumps between floating islands, arcane shifting endlessly forward in search of treasure. A fox-tailed girl with short purple hair dashes beside him with familiarity, laughing and taunting, but he only grins back.  
  
In the next world, Luxanna has pink hair and some ridiculous frilly get-up, but she is heroic and burns bright with teammates and rivals and some who are both.  
  
Some worlds see them with other people. Some worlds see them always alone. But in some worlds, they are together.  
  
Maybe all worlds are cut from the same cloth, cast with the same actors. Or maybe this space is only showing them what's relevant.  
  
There is a world where Ezreal, clearly a student, crosses an empty classroom to steal a kiss from a woman with long blue hair at the teacher's desk. A world where he hides around an apartment's corner, still tugging on his clothes as the older brunet man tries to answer the door to company without giving him away.  
  
In another, Luxanna sits on a rooftop's edge with a dozen birds and a woman that communes with them; long, deep blue wings hiding them as they lean in close. In another she is married into royalty, the tall man playing the role of her husband placing a crown onto her head gently.  
  
Ezreal looks at her, first from the corner of his eye, then finds it impossible not to turn his head for a better look. She turns to to meet his gaze, tugging at his hands gently. The weightless momentum turns them in slow motion, worlds spinning by behind them. It is dizzying, and Ezreal focuses on her. He only wants to see more and more of these potential realities and has to hyper-focus on her to distract himself.  
  
The intensity of his stare does not seem to bother her. Her hair swirls with them, slow and light. Her magic is overwhelming. Shades of opal and pearl shimmer at the tips of her hair, in her eyes. He sees her eyes dart down to his cheeks and knows his own magic must be glowing, too.  
  
She looks back to his eyes. He cannot read her tone when she says, “we're not always together.”  
  
“Of course not,” Ezreal says. The core of Ezreal, as an entity, does not rely on a Luxanna. And vice versa. What he is more interested in is that the core of Luxanna is not 'good.'  
  
She is quiet.  
  
“Lux. I didn't even know you in my world,” he reminds her.  
  
Her fingers twitch around his. He watches her eyelashes as her gaze drops down to their hands. “You still don't.”  
  
The light of the prism is receding. The worlds are painting themselves blue like her teleportation spell. He can feel the arcane gold condensing around only himself. They don't have much time left. He doesn't know what to say. All the things he could say feel stupid and juvenile and false.  
  
Worlds are slipping away one by one. Luxanna is sifting through them like clothing on a shopping rack, seeking out what is right for her.  
  
“Hey,” Luxanna says soft, after a moment. Her eyes are a vivid, neon blue, tinted unnatural by mana, but it's fading now. “Find me?”  
  
“I will.”  
  
It feels like a big promise. He hates knowing that he will keep it. He hates that this Luxanna he does not know enough of yet will be gone and that he will find another like a second-hand replacement. His mind conjures a thousand images, a thousand created worlds in his head where she hates him, or worse, where she doesn't, but they part ways even so.  
  
Luxanna looks relieved. “I can't imagine not using my magic. Not being myself. I can't imagine who I have without the League. I can't imagine what I have when right now...” Her voice cracks and quiets. “When right now it's all I have left.”  
  
Ezreal hates his own desperation, but he feels the way time is ebbing away from them, second by second, word by word. Her problems are so far removed from him that they are too vast. He feels helpless, unable to offer anything, barely even able to understand her worries at all.  
  
Her magic has already made its choice, chosen its focal point. He blurts out, “tell your Ezreal that you're in love with him.”  
  
She flinches, like this is the worst thing she has heard all day. “But it's complicated and–”  
  
“–I don't care.”  
  
Luxanna scowls. “That's hardly–”  
  
–The crystal clatters to the ground. Ezreal lands hard and clumsy on the wooden deck of his yard. The silence of it is jarring. His mouth is still open, ready to interrupt her once more, to insist, I don't care one more time.  
  
Luxanna is gone. Her magic is gone. The crystal is empty and dull.  
  
Moving like clockwork, he moves to his parents old study. He sets it on his father's writing desk, and when he leaves he locks the door behind him.  
  
***  
  
“–your decision to,” Lux continues, but bites off the last of her sentence with a startled, “oh!”  
  
The sun is low in the sky, and vines all across what were once walls curl towards the light. The ruins of walls are just bumps, just partitions between nothing. The grass is uneven, what were once tiles scrapped. They are fascinating ruins that she's never seen before, and her internal map is twisted and tangled. She can't tell north from south and doesn't know where she is.  
  
Ezreal is sprawled out beneath her, holding a dimmed crystal out ahead of him to shield it from her crash landing. An artifact before himself. Lux laughs, not bothering to get up from on top of him.  
  
“Lux?” He asks, incredulous and pained.  
  
“That's correct,” she says, enjoying straddling his back too much to get down.  
  
“The fuck?”  
  
“Guess,” Lux sing-songs. She reaches forward for the crystal he is holding. It is dim and lifeless, not a drop of mana inside of it. The shape of it is different from the prism of the other world, its edges jagged and rough.  
  
Ezreal allows her to take it, though he grumbles into his arms, crossing them under his chin. He is resigned to her being on top of him.  
  
After a moment of complaint he asks, “you figured out the spell?”  
  
She wonders just how much she should tell him, and leans to the side to get a good view of his face. He meets her as best he can, tilting his head over his shoulder with an expression of pure interest. As if all his annoyance has dissolved away.  
  
She grins, and finally gets off of Ezreal. She lays down beside him, but quickly regrets it as he lifts himself over her, leaning over her in revenge, with one arm over her shoulder and the other by her side. He is grinning back down at her, mischievous, with sunset orange coloring him.  
  
He forgets the competitive streak quickly, though he doesn't pull away. “But how'd you get it to bring you here?”  
  
“Needed a gem as a focal point,” she says, vaguely. She does not tell him that she had used his gauntlet's gem as the one.  
  
Ezreal's eyebrows furrow in thought, eyes darting to where she's set the shard down beside her. There is no magic in the crystal shard he's found and he must know it. He thinks better of pointing it out, apparently. Instead he just hovers overhead, hands a bit too close, his side touching hers, eyes locked.  
  
Moments like this are the hardest, Lux thinks. Neither of them willing to make the first move. Herself, because she knows what people will say. Ezreal, because he is afraid of her, of the rejection that he is sure will come. And he is right, has been right.  
  
She wonders if he knows why, though. Wonders if he understands that it isn't that she doesn't like him, but just that she can't allow herself the luxury.  
  
“Are you lonely?” Lux asks, thinking of these overgrown ruins and a lost garden.  
  
Ezreal blinks down at her, looking bewildered but not offended by the question. He is so much more expressive than the other Ezreal had been. She had missed this more than she realized. “I can't be. You dropped in on my alone time.”  
  
She laughs. “Angry?”  
  
“Nah,” he concedes.  
  
“What about when I'm not around?”  
  
He cocks his head to the side, considering. “Got plenty of other friends,” he says. Then adds, “but they kind of suck.”  
  
She knows he doesn't mean it. Knows that he adores Taric and Janna and even Vi despite their bickering. In his own way. “And I don't?”  
  
He doesn't answer, but bows his head a bit with red cheeks. This is as close as Ezreal gets to compliments.  
  
“What are you thinking about?” She asks him.  
  
“Why you're asking so many questions?” Ezreal retorts.  
  
“I want to tell you something,” Lux says. He looks down at her with interest, so much more vividly emotive than in the other world. So much more valuable to her than secrets or her reputation. “Not today. But soon, I think.”  
  
“Sure,” he says neutrally, and lays down beside her to watch the sunset, so close that their arms overlap, fighting for space. Her ankle crosses over his. The clouds are vivid orange and pink. Glimmerings of gold and purple splash across the sky.  
  
She feels the familiar flow of her magic with his and cannot imagine being apart from either.  
  
***  
  
He tells himself the whole way to Demacia to have no expectations. He is going to meet a stranger. He works hard to concentrate his magic into the gem of his gauntlet like gold into a jewelry box. Stow it away, outside of his body, as if it is not a part of him. He hides away his expectations, too, because there is a cruelty to projecting them onto another person that he does not want to hold.  
  
His plan is vague, but that has worked for him before. Travel to Demacia. Find Luxanna.  
  
It goes wrong before he even gets there. She nearly tramples him on the road, veering her horse to the side. Dusted snow kicks up into eyes. There is a whole squadron of soldiers behind her, at least a dozen women that pull to halt behind her.  
  
When he looks up, when he's scrubbed ice from his face, Luxanna is above. The winter sunlight halos her golden hair, glows in the pure-white mane of her horse. Her hair is pinned up in a braided bun, her traveling cloaks are intricately embroidered for her nobility, beautiful even with damp spots at their edges from the snow.  
  
“Apologies,” Luxanna says. It's strange to see no recognition in her eyes. Not even a flicker as she looks down at him with a practiced smile.  
  
His voice catches in his throat. He didn't plan to be star-struck, didn't plan to be unprepared. He can feel magic from her fingertips, muted and dulled and secret. He assures himself that red-cheeks can be excused by the season.  
  
“It's – fine,” Ezreal manages. He swallows. “Actually, Luxanna Crownguard, right? Can I talk to you?”  
  
She tries to hide her confusion, but fails entirely. She motions for one of her followers to take care of her horse for a moment, hopping down smoothly. The snow crunches under her boots, and she leads him to the shade of a tree, a small distance away from the others for politeness' sake.  
  
The air is cooler in the shadows, but the tree blocks the wind. Ezreal holds his scarf over his mouth to breath warmth onto his face.  
  
Luxanna seems content to wait for him, surveying their surroundings with patience, and with patches of sunlight dancing on her cheeks. Light catches in her hair, in slivers of ice falling from the leaves overhead.  
  
Ezreal lets his magic out in small, careful increments. Watches the way Luxanna's eyes flicker his way in recognition of something unseen. She stubbornly refuses to face him, but her eyes meet his.  
  
She whispers, “what are you doing?”  
  
“I'm Ezreal,” he says. “And you're a mage.”  
  
She takes a threatening step closer to him.  
  
“I'm not going to out you or anything,” he says; his voice comes out flat instead of reassuring. But maybe it's that tone of disinterest that soothes her enough that her shoulders relax. “I'm not even from Demacia, so I don't... Care.”  
  
She is still sizing him up, trying to determine what threat he poses.  
  
He keeps his voice level. Maybe emotions and magic will overwhelm her. He can only cut out one of the two. “I just thought that if you wanted somewhere to practice magic, or wanted to study old artifacts, I'd... Offer my garden. In Piltover.”  
  
“Piltover,” she repeats, cautious. She hasn't given an inch of her own magic away to him.  
  
Ezreal shivers. Nods.  
  
She does not seem to know how to take the offer. He doesn't blame her when it comes from a stranger. She examines him for a moment longer, then says, diplomatically, “thank you for the offer, Ezreal.”  
  
Luxanna leaves with her people, but she glances back at him twice. Ezreal thinks that is worth something.  
  
***  
  
“Tired?” Ezreal asks, bumping his shoulder into Lux's.  
  
The match on the Fields of Justice was long and close. Tedious, Lux thinks, for how little it really matters. This fight was not for war, not for land. Influential merchants bickering over trade routes.  
  
She nudges him back. “A little bit.”  
  
“Want to rest at my place?” He asks, and grins. “Bet we could get there quick. I stole a replacement crystal from the mines for my place.”  
  
Lux has to stifle a startled laugh. “You what?”  
  
“I grabbed a couple, if you want some. Figured it be for less conspicuous travel than coaches. And faster.”  
  
“That was not at all my question.”  
  
He snickers, looking proud of himself even as he hunches his shoulders inwards like he's hiding the secret in his body and needs to conceal it. “The plans for using the mines as a field got scrapped anyway, so it's not like they were going to use them.”  
  
“This feels rather illicit,” Lux points out. There is something intimate to the idea of having a secret, instant path to Ezreal's home being offered like this.  
  
To the idea of going here after a match when she is so tired, like this.  
  
Ezreal looks stricken, red-faced, but does not reply.  
  
She has already spoken to the journalists for the day. Knows that her family will think she is busy with Institute matters, and knows that other champions are too self-occupied to care where she disappears to when she leaves the Institute grounds. Even now, those with business here are passing by without a second glance at the two of them.  
  
Then there is the intersect. Family and champion. She catches Garen's eye as he passes; sees him pointedly look away and continue walking, even as Ezreal offers his hands and Lux takes them  
  
She can feel Ezreal trying to read the spell as she casts it, his magic twisting up with hers in a sloppy, weak copy that she has to make up for to bring him with her.  
  
It takes concentration to pull her target away from Ezreal's gauntlet. That gem's power is strong, and it draws her magic the same greedy way that it pulls at his own to help control it. Finding the shards at Ezreal's home comes next.  
  
The world dissolves back into existence; Ezreal's small, cozy home, quiet and safe and familiar. His living room and all the artifacts and lined up stones on his shelves.  
  
Ezreal is laughing when they land, shaking his head. “Still can't get it.”  
  
“We'll just have to practice,” Lux assures him.  
  
He hasn't let go of her hand. He looks at her at the edges of his sight and hums thoughtfully as they stand in the middle of his living room. Lux doesn't let go, either.  
  
“What are you thinking?” He asks her.  
  
Lux smiles. “About logistics.”  
  
He turns to face her, now, cocking his head to the side.  
  
“How to express myself to you properly,” Lux explains, “and what comes after that.”  
  
“I'm not going to let you beat me,” Ezreal huffs, his hand shifting in hers uncomfortably, suddenly clammy.  
  
“I always do,” she reminds him.  
  
“I,” Ezreal blurts out, then flushes and loses his nerve. Lux waits, and after a moment Ezreal lets out a long breath. Quietly, fingers still laced together, he tries again. Calmly, with his voice flat like it gets when he is trying too hard to disassociate from his feelings. “I love you.”  
  
Lux squeezes his hands and leans in to touch her forehead against his. “I love you too, Ezreal. Thank you for taking the pressure off of me.”  
  
He snorts and averts his eyes, but his cheeks are still glowing red beneath the magic markings.  
  
***  
  
Ezreal gives up. He was stupid and smitten and she was a stranger. He knows this. He gives up, and the winter comes and goes with his ideation of her.  
  
It isn't until spring that there is a knock at his door. Ezreal is still rubbing sleep from his eyes with one hand when he opens the door.  
  
Luxanna stands on his front steps, morning sunlight pouring in from behind her. She shifts her weight awkwardly, looking out of place and hyper-aware of it. She takes in his clearly half-asleep demeanor, then looks down to the small potted flower that she is holding in front of her.  
  
“You mentioned a garden,” Luxanna says, with a shy smile. “I thought it best not to impose without bringing a gift.”  
  
“Ah,” Ezreal says. “Garden may have been an exaggeration.”  
  
She arches an eyebrow, head tilting to the side. It is strange how quickly he grew accustomed to her understanding him and knowing things he had not told her.  
  
He leads her through the house, and she follows respectfully. “I hadn't realized who you were,” Luxanna comments, eying the portraits hanging on the wall. “Who your parents... Were.”  
  
He makes a noncommittal sound.  
  
She stammers, as if sensing she has stepped on a land-mine, “I, um... You certainly weren't exaggerating in regards to the...” She swallows. “Magic. Here. There are so many different kinds woven all around. It's... Overwhelming.”  
  
Ezreal shrugs, and opens the door to the back-yard. To the gardens, dead after winter, still over-grown with grass.  
  
He hears Luxanna gasp, startled at the state of things. She still gingerly hands over the flower she had brought when he holds his hands out to take it.  
  
He realizes, only after taking it, that he does not really know what to do with it.  
  
“It's a lyre flower,” Luxanna offers. “They bloom in the spring but are dormant in other seasons, so don't be alarmed if it doesn't take. They grow best in the shade near water. It... May not have been the best decision, but with so much technology in Piltover, I imagined any flower's needs could be met.”  
  
“No, it's good,” Ezreal says. He stares at it. It looks like a branch with a family of hearts strung up from it, dangling by threads all in a row. He looks out to the edge of the deck, where the dry hole that was once a pond rests in the shadow of a cherry tree. Then he looks back to Lux. “You know about gardening?”  
  
“Only second-hand, I'm afraid. The Crownguards look after a small number of prolific farming families.”  
  
“Huh,” Ezreal says.  
  
“Mm,” Luxanna replies.  
  
“Does your squadron know about your magic?”  
  
Luxanna stares at the cherry tree to avoid looking at him. “I imagine they have suspicions, but it's hard to say. Apparently I'm not as good at concealing it as I thought.”  
  
Ezreal winces. He isn't sure how to explain that in a way that does not sound insane. “It's easier to tell, since I'm a mage, too. And my gauntlet kind of seeks magic. If that's any comfort.”  
  
“Somewhat,” Luxanna says, evenly.  
  
For the time being, he sets the potted plant in the shade, vowing to use the hose to fill up the pond after Luxanna has departed.  
  
While she is here, he shows her artifacts, lets her turn them over in her hands with awe written all over her face. He watches her light up, getting to thumb through tomes that he knows neither of them can really read. And he watches the confusion spread across her face when she finds a balanced pile of ordinary stones.  
  
***  
  
Luxanna pops up frequently at first, then her visits slow down. It is always unannounced. Ezreal shows her the findings from his latest trips, watches her thumb over them with appreciation and a voracious curiosity.  
  
When she comes, she practices magic in his yard – twisting up the light of the sun and moving it. She crafts up illusions – she changes her appearance, changes the garden's. She makes a game of it, of arranging and rearranging the flowers, landscaping with light until she is satisfied, offering only a smirk as she ignores Ezreal's input.  
  
She does not talk much, does not open up to him. He has not seen this Luxanna laugh a single time. He can't complain. Once again, he is just escapism to Luxanna, just in a different way. Besides, he isn't so talkative himself.  
  
The first time he works on the garden, he tells himself that this is like his stones. A joke he is telling himself. He is covered in dirt after fixing the small waterfall and filtration system, sweating and tired and irritated out of his mind at the guide-books he has checked out from the library.  
  
Luxanna appears to have let herself in and crossed through his house. She catches him slouched against the rocks in the empty pond, holding the lyre flower pot. It has been doing well in the shade, even survived with just a cheap sprinkler tending to it, but he knows he needs to plant it in the ground, soon.  
  
For a moment Luxanna just stares.  “What are you doing?”  
  
“Gardening,” Ezreal says.  
  
“Well, is it ready to be filled?” Luxanna asks, and when he nods, she retrieves the hose. Ezreal only lifts his arms and the flower pot, and allows her to spray him, keeping his face as stoic as he is able.  
  
Luxanna cracks first, breaking into laughter and doubling over so far that her aim is ruined. Her long hair is loose today and she's managed to wet her own tips with the hose. Ezreal can't help but laugh too.  
  
He climbs out of the pond and its two inch deep waters, setting the lyre flowers down nearby, in the spot where he wants to plant it. It isn't warm enough to be in soaked clothes; he was only overheated from the exertion and his own temper. His shirt is clinging to him, and the breeze feels cold against his collarbone.  
  
When he moves towards the door, Luxanna backs up mischievously until her back is against the closed door. She snickers at him, until he tries to reach past her. Suddenly her laugh catches in her throat. She drops the hose, and cold water flows over their feet.  
  
Her eyes scan his, searching. He realizes how close they are, close enough that there is a damp spot on her clothes now. Realizes the faint blush on her cheeks, the way her magic swells for just a split second before she catches it.  
  
“What are you thinking?” He asks her.  
  
Her gaze darts to his mouth, then back up. “Um,” she says, “nothing.”  
  
She steps aside and lets him in. When he has changed and returns to the garden, Luxanna has tied her hair back into a ponytail and is holding the hose over the half-filled pond. This time she takes care not to spray him as he transplants the lyre flowers into the ground at the edge of the pond.  
  
When they are finished, she conjures fish with the light on the water's surface. She twists up the glimmers. Sometimes she even moves the water, though she startles each time, so badly that it splashes back down.  
  
***  
  
The next time she shows up, it is with a pouch full of flower seeds. She still mostly uses her time in his home to practice her magic, but Ezreal figures if he's going to be outside watching her, he may as well be productive. He pulls weeds and slices through grass.  
  
He isn't sure if it is motivating or disheartening to see the garden blooming all around him. The areas he works in are a slice of reality in Luxanna's illusions. He doesn't complain.  
  
After all, when he works without her, he kind of misses it.  
  
She helps him plant the seeds, one day. By the time she visits next, they are sprouting.  
  
***  
  
There is a day in the summer that Luxanna lets herself in. Ezreal is adjusting the sprinklers, and watches her lean against the wall. Her shoulders relax as a sigh travels through her whole body, and then she slides down until she is sitting with her knees pulled to her chest.  
  
She is silent as Ezreal finishes what he is doing, and as he crosses the yard to crouch beside her. He is careful not to touch. Her clothes are nice as always, white and bright under the sun, and Ezreal is covered in dirt.  
  
“They know,” she murmurs, staring at her knees. “My squadron.”  
  
She does not talk much about her life. About her situation or her missions. These are her secret world away from him, just like he is a secret world away from them. But he knows that her squadron was assigned to her by the Illuminators, picked out carefully from the Radiant Ones. (Demacia is ridiculous, he thinks. To be so blatant in their worship of magic, yet so quick twist a mage up for their own purposes while condemning her.)  
  
“Melli was the first to discover,” Luxanna says, as if the names mean anything to him. “She kept it to herself for – it must have been months, she knew. She told Alice. Alice told Jamie, and... So on.”  
  
Ezreal frowns. He doesn't think touching her would be a comfort, even if it didn't come with dirt. Eventually he presses, “so? What can they even do about it? If they go to their superiors, that's just the people that chose them for you – the people who already knew. Right?”  
  
“Who knows who else they'll tell?” Luxanna asks, voice cracking. “Anyone from home – my family.”  
  
“Your family probably already knows, Lux.”  
  
She is quiet, refusing to respond to that.  
  
“Kids are bad at keeping secrets. You might be good at it now, but when you were growing up?” When her silence only persists, he offers, “I used to break windows a lot. Thought it was fun to throw magic around.”  
  
She laughs quietly, against her will, and quickly buries her face in her arms to hide it.  
  
“My mother might know. But certainly not my father. Or my brother. Regardless, these women don't have the same loyalty to me as blood, Ezreal.”  
  
“Okay, so... What? Are they spreading rumors already?”  
  
Luxanna hesitates, pulling up from her arms to look at him. She looks confused, like this is the first time she has thought of this. “No.” She scowls at his look of skepticism. “But I know they all know! They came to me as a group to discuss it!”  
  
“That doesn't sound like a bad thing. What did they say?”  
  
She presses her face back into her knees, arms dropping helplessly. “I don't know. I ran.”  
  
“Here?” Ezreal asks, incredulous.  
  
She lets out quiet, unintelligible whine in response. “I don't know,” she says, and looks up, for the first time today, meeting his eyes. “I thought seeing you would be a comfort.”  
  
She is analyzing him again, watching his every move. Blue eyes run from his dirtied clothes to his mouth to his eyes. Back to his mouth, then back up as she leans closer.  
  
He can feel her body-heat with how close they are. Her lips are parted softly.  
  
Ezreal leans back from her, nearly losing his balance. His cheeks flush, too acutely aware of where that was going, of what comfort she was seeking. “Uh, I think, bad time? For that?”  
  
Luxanna shrinks back down into herself, though her expression is steeled. “I... I see. I apologize for... Misreading.”  
  
“No, that's not...” He frowns, and runs a hand through his hair. “Just. Maybe not when you're a mess.”  
  
She looks down at herself, as if examining her clothes. After a beat, she looks at him, leveling him with a blank stare.  
  
“You know what I mean. Talk to your people.”  
  
She nods. Ezreal allows her to loiter around for the rest of the day, but she leaves in the evening.  
  
***  
  
She doesn't come back for two months. The garden is growing.  
  
Ezreal does not have time to even get up when Luxanna's knock comes at the door. She lets herself in immediately after, and for the first time, she is not alone.  
  
The three women behind her all wear traveling cloaks similar to hers. Less intricate, less expensive, but all clearly of Demacian design. They are each holding a potted flower. Morning glories from the first, asters from the second, and marigolds from the third.  
  
Luxanna tells him, “everyone wanted to meet you.” Asks, “is this alright?”  
  
Their names are Rosalind, Katherine, and Charlotte, Ezreal learns from Lux, as she directs them where to plant the flowers in his garden. They bicker among themselves, but Ezreal is too distracted by Lux's arm lined up against his to eavesdrop.  
  
“It's fine,” he says.  
  
The next group is four women, each with a flower. More morning glories. Roses, with a pouch of seeds. Red and white. Daisies. They thank him for giving their commander a space to practice her magic. One of them shifts with discomfort at the word, but her smile is no less sincere.  
  
“I thought you might be lonely,” Luxanna admits.  
  
Ezreal watches them, Alice, Melli, Selene and Jamie, carefully patting dirt around their flowers.  
  
He shrugs. “Not when you're around.”  
  
She considers this for a long moment, and does not ever seem to settle on a reply.  
  
The next time it is three more. Lycole, Pianne, and Nara. They eye him suspiciously, but plant their flowers anyway. Pianne's head snaps up from her work to glare at him nearly each time Luxanna opens her mouth. Luxanna looks more amused by it than anything, and so Ezreal lets it slide without comment.  
  
He expects things to follow this pattern. With Luxanna easing him into meeting her squadron, bringing them in small groups, her visits still stretched out by weeks. Gifts and suspicious looks. Gr attitude and caution.  
  
He doesn't entirely blame them for feeling conflicted. They watch Luxanna practice her magic in awe and fear and respect all at once. They hound her with questions, though they can't make sense of her answers. Sometimes they cry, and Ezreal has no idea what to do for this, but Luxanna handles it well enough.  
  
The next time is is only two, Forte and Mimi. They bring fish, in carefully held bags of water. They spend the whole day consulting their books and testing the water temperature, making sure they will acclimate properly to his pond and telling him what to feed them.  
  
And the next time breaks the pattern. The next time isn't for two months. Which is good, because Ezreal manages to twist his ankle on an expedition, and is away for even more of that time than he had intended. (Before he leaves, he asks his uncle to come feed the fish, to check the timers in the hextech sprinklers, and aggressively ignores the dampness of the old man's eyes, the eagerness with which he agrees.)  
  
When Luxanna shows up next, it is with her entire squadron. They are tired and hungry and for once arrive after night-fall instead of early in the day.  
  
They don't go into much detail about the mission. Helping a small village against against an infestation of monsters; some kind of cave-in, too. Family of family of Demacia, despite the distance. None of them want to talk too much about it.  
  
Ezreal figures he should be angry about some twenty women in his home, eight of them completely new to him. (Mico, Arya, Estella, Lana, Sierra, Chris, Isabelle, and Violet. Though if you asked him which is which, he would not be able to tell you.)  
  
Luxanna just says, helplessly, “I'm so sorry to impose,” and Ezreal can't muster the energy to be annoyed. The thought of sending them to wander the streets and look for enough vacancies at an inn to host them all does not cross his mind..  
  
They are decidedly polite guests, doing their best not to take up as much space as they do. A handful of them who are not as weary as the others hurry to the shopping district, and when they return, Forte and Charlotte cook a feast of a meal for everyone. Then they are spread across his home like vines – five women sitting on the couch, two leaning up against the arm-rests. Some sit on the floor at the other end of the coffee table.  There are three at the kitchen table, and two empty chairs that they all refuse to occupy, saving them for Luxanna and Ezreal whether they want them or not.  
  
Outside some women sit and some stand on the deck, cheerfully discussing the flowers in bloom and when to plant different vegetables. The evening breeze is somewhat chilly, but it's a blessing with all the bodies in the house, and the door is left open to help let fresh air inside.  
  
Ezreal can hear the chatter from every direction as he slides down to sit beside Luxanna outside.  
  
Some are discussing the mission, the garden, his home, his artifacts. Some whisper about magic with uncertainty, but no real secrecy, open and honest in their fears and pleased when another can offer insight.  
  
“Nice and lively,” Luxanna comments, but Ezreal knows this is another apology.  
  
He eats, unsure how to answer. There haven't been this many people in his home since he was a child. The garden hasn't looked like so nice since his parents left. Eventually, between bites, he offers, “it is nice.”  
  
They are up far too late into the night, taking turns working at the mess they've made of the kitchen, but when it is finally time to sleep, Ezreal does his best to find enough spare bedding. It isn't nice, and more bodies are on the floor than not, but they all insist it is no trouble and try to align themselves out of walkways.  
  
Luxanna has not spread out her bedding. She is still holding it, bundled in her arms. Ezreal cannot blame her; there aren't many places left to settle.  
  
“Your leg,” she says, somewhat abruptly, catching the way his eyes are scanning the room for space. The women are all whispering amongst themselves like girls at a slumber party. “You were resting your weight strangely. If you'd like, I can take a look at it?”  
  
Pianne and Jamie have already stretched across the sofa, looking so cramped together that if it were up to Ezreal, one of them would move to the floor. There is no clear path to the dining room and its chairs.  
  
“I'm actually quite awake,” Luxanna presses. “So...”  
  
Ezreal considers. He offers his hand; ignores the awkward beat of silence among the murmurs, as too many women all take notice of Luxanna accepting it. He leads her down the hall to his parents study. There is a particular way that her fingers tighten around his in recognition of where they are, but she does not comment on it.  
  
It is quiet, in the room, and Luxanna motions for him to sit. He pulls the chair from the desk, turning it to the center of the room before sitting down and rolling up his pant-leg.  
  
“It's just sprained, Lux,” he tells her, but she kneels down in front of him, anyway.  
  
She presses her fingers against his calf, her touch firm but careful, growing lighter and lighter as she works her way down to his ankle. Ezreal's heart races. He wants to look away, somehow embarrassed, but can't seem to manage.  
  
His face feels hot, but must not give him away. When Luxanna looks up, questioningly, it seems only to be to make sure she hasn't hurt him. Satisfied, she returns to what has become a leg massage.  
  
“What happened?” She asks.  
  
Ezreal shrugs. “Fell. What happened to you?”  
  
Luxanna considers this, focused on her task. When she looks up at him, it is with the exhaustion caught up, no longer hidden. She is still rubbing her thumb along his leg, but drops her head to rest against his knee. “Put simply, we were outnumbered. There were more monsters than we had heard reports of, and for a time we were separated. No one was hurt, at least not badly, but it took much longer than we had expected.”  
  
“So I was closest?” Ezreal asks, amused.  
  
“Yes,” Luxanna says, slowly. Her head rolls against his leg. She looks up at him through her thick lashes, and says with caution, “I also... Wanted to see you.”  
  
His throat feels dry, and he knows he would be bouncing his leg if she were not resting against it. “Worried I was lonely?”  
  
It should be an easy joke for her to go along with. Briefly, he is distracted by the hair, so much longer than the other Luxanna's, cascading over her shoulders, down her back. She shakes her head, nearly nuzzling into his knee. “I had been too busy to visit, lately. There was a cave-in and we were in the dark and – it wasn't long, I have my magic to bring light wherever I need it. And I wasn't alone, there were six of us caught in it... But... I missed you.”  
  
“I,” Ezreal begins, then swallows. It's hard to get the words out. He isn't used to – admitting things. To having things to admit. People to admit them to. He does not admit as much as her, does not admit that her face had flashed through his mind when he'd lost his footing. Does not admit that he had taken the risk for an artifact he'd thought she might like. “Missed you, too.”  
  
She rises, resting perhaps too much weight on his leg with an open palm. Now, looking down at him, she asks, “Will you kiss me, this time?”  
  
He opens his mouth to answer, but before the words come out he hears whispering. At the other side of the door, a muffled 'shh!' and a clattering from further away.  
  
He leans to the side, looking past Luxanna at the shifting shadows that creep under the door. The hallway floor creeks under a dozen feet, and Luxanna twists, turning to look over her shoulder.  
  
“Well,” she murmurs, embarrassed.  
  
He stands up slowly, quiet. Luxanna offers him a hand, and though he doesn't need it, he takes it anyway.  
  
It's easy to wrap his arms around her. Comfortable and warm. It's easy to kiss her, too. Her lips are soft, and he likes the pretty way her eyes flutter shut as they lean in close. When they part, their bodies are still lined up against one another; their breath intermingles.  
  
He can't say he loves her, yet. That is still too much for someone he knows so little, for someone he sees only in intermittent visits broken up by weeks and weeks of her world that he will never fully grasp.  
  
But he does – she is here in his parents' study, in the only secret world that has ever mattered to him. With her friends pressing up against the door, eavesdropping like schoolgirls, with her hand resting careful on his hip and lips parted like an invitation. He cannot picture worlds where they are not together, even when he has seen them.  
  
“I missed you,” he repeats, because that is as close as he can get, filling the space between his kiss and a true confession.

**Author's Note:**

> Flowers take time to bloom.


End file.
